The Face That Launched A Thousand Ships
by evizyt
Summary: On the fifth anniversary of Dumbledore's death, Draco Malfoy shocks the wizarding world when he announces his intentions to wed war hero extraordinaire, next in line for Ministress of Magic, and Witch Weekly's Most Eligible Bachelorette for three years running: Hermione Granger.


_A/N: So excited to begin this story. Hopefully I'll be updating my other Dramione, but for now, I had to start another with my spin on a traditional plot. Canon-compliant except for the epilogue! The title is from Christopher Marlowe's play Doctor Faustus. It's about Helen of Troy. _

The Face that Launched a Thousand Ships

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**chapter 1**

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Draco Malfoy—tall, lithe, sleekly handsome, if he did say so himself—slowed his brisk pace for the third time that day. Malfoys never ambled, but a passerby would be hard put to call his shambling semblance of a stroll anything but, as his long stride shortened and he carefully withdrew a large manila envelope from inside his heavy black robes. The robes were his favorite pair, the finest sort of fabric that wizarding money could buy, with an inbuilt charm against muggles so that they would appear normal to any casual glance. But the rich material, lined with a synthetic velvet to ward off the autumnal chill, suddenly felt cloying. A flush of heat went through him, slicing straight through his stomach, as he gazed at the envelope.

_This is it_, he thought, holding it out in front of him once again, and finally slowing his pretense of walking at all to stop in the middle of the busy London street. _Now or never, Draco_, he thought, and another surge of heat—nerves, his brain corrected, but he squashed the unruly thought—flashed through him before dissipating.

A pile of photographs and documents spilled into his waiting hands, a mixture of muggle stills and moving wizarding pictures. Draco flipped through them eagerly, just once, his hands shaking, and then upon reaching the end, he threw back his head and laughed, a melodious, rich sound that nonetheless carried intimidating overtones.

"Oh, Merlin," he breathed finally, wiping his eyes as he realized people on the street were giving him a wide berth. "Oh, Granger," he laughed again, shaking his head. "Oh, Granger, you are royally, royally fucked."

He delicately slid the precious pages back in to the envelope, so very unassuming now, in relation to its valuable contents, and continued on his merry way, occasionally shaking his head at the apparent plight of Hermione Granger. _And we all thought she was such an intelligent witch_, he thought wryly to himself, and then laughed aloud at his own sarcasm. Every limb in his body fizzed, and he felt drunk, absolutely out of control, as if everything was spinning.

There was a new lightness to his feet as he walked back toward the apparition point, a lightness that he hadn't felt since he'd heard the news that Lucius was in Azkaban for life. His mother was waiting for him at home, and he finally had good news to bequeath upon her, even excellent news. He thought eagerly of the press conference awaiting them within the next few days, and barely restrained another gut-wrenching fit of laughter in the middle of the street. It wouldn't do to lose his composure twice in one day.

He shook his head. Oh, and Granger. If she thought she was going to wheedle out of this one, all pleading eyes and furious threats and Gryffindor glares—oh, but she had another thought coming. He, Draco Malfoy, could finally say that he had bested Hermione Granger. And what a besting it was!

He apparated in a flourish of synthetic velvet and fine fabric, reappearing on the manor grounds with his cloak still twirling. The wind picked up a corner and billowed it out, and for a moment he could see himself in his mind's eye: a lone figure standing on a stretch of dark British moor, with the grounds streaking out behind him on all sides, his bright hair illuminated by the last rays of the dying sun. How striking, how handsome, how tragic and terrible of a figure he must present—the solitary villain-no-longer, marching toward the horizon.

The trek to the large house plastered rather ungainly across said horizon was a ways from his favorite apparition point. Draco always apparated there deliberately, both for effect, and for the walk. He liked to have a chance to clear his head before entering the more oppressive atmosphere of the ancient manor. And while thoughts of a certain muggle-born witch fueled this romp toward the door, he was no worse the wear for their intrusion.

The Malfoys had undergone a dramatic change since the imprisonment of Lucius. Harry Potter, of all people, had testified on behalf of Narcissa in the trial (Draco still didn't quite understand the whole scenario, what with the Boy-Who-Lived being Not-Dead but Sort-of-Dead and Narcissa then telling the Dark Lord that he was Actually-Dead and so then he was the Boy-Who-Lived-And-Then-Died-But-Still-Wasn't-Dead, and somehow Narcissa got credit for not properly finishing him off).

After Narcissa's exoneration, there had been Draco's own trial. He didn't like remembering back on those days, but miraculously, he had escaped with no Azkaban time. The same, however, could not be said for the Malfoy name—or the Malfoy finances. In addition to five years of public service as a volunteer Ministry official for Draco personally, he had been levied with heavy fines and an ongoing investigation was being conducted into the Malfoy estate.

Narcissa, still delicate from the aftermath of the war, was unaware of the increasingly bleak outlook, and so the burden of balancing the books had fallen into Draco's unwelcoming lap.

Much easier, he decided, was to manipulate and scheme and fix the people persecuting him, than to actually attempt to fix the decades of financial corruption that had created the problem in the first place. Not to mention, in his opinion, how terribly unfair it was that he had to literally pay for his father's mistakes while the older man was allowed to merely rot away in jail, scot-free. His own mistakes, to be sure, were much fewer, further between, and less detected by law enforcement agencies.

And thus, Slytherin to the core, had his ingenious idea been born.

Upon reaching the manor, Draco threw open the doors to his ancestral home, striding into the halls with more pomp than usual. "Mother!" he cried. "I'm famished! Let's have dinner immediately."

Silence greeted his announcement, his tones slowly dying as they echoed through the vast space, eventually absorbed by the numerous hangings and portraits. An older gentleman in a portrait with a fruit bowl and a cushy armchair frowned down at Draco, evidently awakened from a nap.

"Draco?" Narcissa's soft voice broke the interminable silence, as she glided down the main stairs of the household to where Draco stood in the atrium, watching her with an inscrutable expression. She was still beautiful, even with silvery strands in her fine blonde hair, and lines from worry around her eyes. She was still his mother, haughty expression, grey hair, prejudices, and all, and Draco loved her with an alarming ferocity. Delicate, demure, always completely proper, Narcissa's descent took the correct amount of time: feet, clad in appropriate shoes, followed by beautiful, even elaborate, robes, arranged to fall in a pleasing way over her shoulders.

"It's been so lonely without you, dearest," she said, moving to kiss him lightly on the cheek, and Draco rested a hand on her shoulder.

"It's good to be home."

She inspected his face, reaching as if to rearrange his hair, and then staying her hand. His heart ached as she terminated the motion. "What's the matter, Draco? You look positively…Ecstatic."

"Matter?" he blinked at her blankly, the recent news almost completely forgotten in lieu of seeing his mother again. He'd been travelling for a month; a mixture of business, pleasure, and planning. "Nothing, mother. I'm just relaxed from the trip, and glad to see you."

His mother smiled at him, a brief, glancing ray of sunshine through heavy cloud cover, and for a moment she looked like a young woman again, not someone whose life no longer resembled anything she'd ever known. "I'm glad to see you, too," she said, and then her hand reached up to run over his hair, and Draco couldn't hold in his own smile, he grinned like a naughty boy who'd just been caught stealing sweets, and pulled her into a bear hug.

"It's good to be home," he said again.

As he and Narcissa walked into their formal dining room, the elaborate portraiture and drapes suddenly stifling, Draco's mind returned to the contents of the manila envelope. The solution to all his problems was right around the corner, and all he had to do was to put all the various components in motion. His hand itched to pull the envelope out of his robes and run through the contents again, but he restrained himself. He was a Malfoy, for Merlin's sake, and he could exercise some measure of self-control.

A bubble rose up in his chest, threatening to escape in some form of laughter, and he realized with no small measure of surprise that the sensation was, in fact, relief. _Relief_. Such a foreign emotion to Draco Malfoy, who lived life on the edge of his seat, always tense and waiting to see what would happen next. It had been a long time—possible, never,—since he had dictated the ebb and flow of his own life, and it was a strange feeling indeed. The future stretched out before him: multiple prospects, all at the flick of his fingers, and he wondered for the umpteenth time what she would say. Everything could still go wrong. He would have to lay it out to her correctly; suggest it in the right light, as it were. It was Granger, after all, and she was nothing if not strangely volatile.

Once, Draco Malfoy would have told you that all Gryffindors were alike. Once a Gryffindor, always a Gryffindor, and nauseatingly brave and self-sacrificing. He would have claimed that he could predict their choice of action in any situation: simply pick the stupidest, most idiotic thing possible, and then that's exactly what they would do. This rule of thumb likely still applied to Harry Potter, whose antics Draco hadn't been following of late. He'd seen something about a marriage, happily-ever-after and immediately discarded his ex-schoolmate from memory.

No, it was Hermione Granger he was concerned about these days.

And Hermione Granger was different.

Dinner with his mother was comfortable, the silence between them expected and normal, and Draco found himself enjoying the food, the unseen service of the house elves, and the time to muse on his own. Narcissa ate little, watching Draco from the corner of her eye, the trademark curl of her upper lip loosening the longer she watched him smile to himself.

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Draco Malfoy strode into the Ministry of Magic, fine robes once again streaming behind him (along, unfortunately, with his rather shaggy blond hair). He cursed himself for not getting it cut, but shrugged it off. There was nothing to be done now.

Even today, four years after the culmination of the war, his presence still evoked whispers. Murmurs, most of them unobtrusive, he could handle. But within the Ministry there was the familiar bombardment of dirty looks, hateful glances from the families that Lucius had terrorized, and those who still believed Draco had more penance to suffer.

_Hate to disappoint you, _Draco thought cheerily. _But my penance ends today_.

Hermione's office was on the top floor, the same as the Minister himself. As a member of his cabinet, she was also a holder of one of the largest offices within the Ministry, with five windows. The witch checking in his wand eagerly informed Draco of all these details, blathering on about Granger as if she were the second coming of Merlin. Granger was, apparently, the next favorite for Ministress of Magic, and being rather personally groomed by Ernest Smith, the current Minister. Draco despised the man, and his son, Zacharias, whom he remembered less-than-fondly from their Hogwarts days, and silently wished Granger all the best in achieving said rise.

Finally checked in, ears bursting with all of Hermione's accolades and accomplishments as well as the directions to her office, he headed for the elevators, belatedly realizing that he still had no idea what Granger's job was, exactly—only that she was apparently very good at it.

"Well, if it isn't what the cat dragged in," someone said, in a strangled sort of voice, as he breezed by. Draco looked up before he could prevent himself, catching the eyes of Ginny Weasley, who was frowning at him with a very juvenile sort of disgust.

"Not one of your cats, presumably," he replied coolly, looking her up and down. "From what I hear, you still can't afford one." Ignoring her small huff of outrage, he continued on toward the elevator, smirking to himself. The Weasley finances just never got old.

But as he pressed the button for the penthouse offices, feeling the familiar sinking of his stomach as the elevator shot into the air, a small twinge of his conscience told him that Weasley's words still stung, however trivial their interaction had been. She was just an example of how he would never again fit in to this world.

He was met at the top floor by a short boy with bright green hair and the expression of someone who had only recently given up the mischievousness of youth. Despite himself, Draco rather liked him.

"Ms. Granger's expecting you, sir," the boy said, a slight cockney accent broadening some of the vowels.

"Why is your hair green?" Draco asked him, before he could remind himself that Malfoys were not interested in the lives of others. "And how is she expecting me?"

"She's a busy witch," the boy told him as they walked, answering his second question first. "The check-in counter always sends up a memo when someone checks in for her, so that she can squeeze any last minute drop-ins into her appointment book. She gets quite a few of those, for some reason, so she always keeps a little time clear."

Draco nodded, head spinning, astounded once again with the efficiency that was Hermione Granger.

"Oh," the boy said, as they reached a gleaming oak door. "And my hair's green because I'm a greniwizard."

Draco looked blankly at him, but the boy smirked, knocked on the door, and skipped away, plucking a few zooming memos out of the air on his way. While waiting for a response from what he presumed was Granger's inner sanctum, Draco glanced around. He was in a wide open waiting-room of sorts, filled with a few plump looking sofas and some sterner chairs. It was softer than he would have expected of Granger; warmer, somehow.

The deep brown of the leather sofas was a rich, almost chocolatey color, the color of smiles and whispered tete-a-tetes, of steaming coffee on a winter morning, stark against the snow. The sofas spoke of long evenings in front of fires, of freshly baked bread and dinners around a worn kitchen table. Dramatic and magnificence were appreciable qualities indeed, but the drama of this color was subdued, somehow, calling to mind soft eyes and smooth coils of curls; the hair of a woman cascading over a naked back.

The walls were a rich, cream, the color of skin in the low lighting of a romantic restaurant; of pearly teeth glimmering in moonlight. It was a cream that invited the hand to caress, the rich color of a dollop of whipped cream, a flickering yellow tinge from where the candlelight plays over the surface of parchment.

The rug was—unsurprisingly, in relation to the rest of it—a deep, dramatic red: luscious, bold, arresting. The color of lips, of dancing, passion, kissing, and daring whispers. He wondered how anyone who came here retained any presence of mind, surrounded by such vivid beauty. Had she been reincarnated from a past life as an interior decorator? Draco wondered. Or was it simply that Granger was good at everything she did, absolutely everything?

"Come in!" A voice trailed through the door, Granger's posh accent cutting the quiet like a knife. Draco started, realized he'd been daydreaming, one hand flat against her shiny door, the fingers relaxed against the varnish, the heat from his hand clouding the shine in a few places. His fingers were splayed like tendrils of pale hair, curling lightly, wanton and unruly. Draco shook his head, discarding those thoughts like rain sheeting off an umbrella, and stepped smoothly into her office, shutting the door behind him with a click.

Then, he took another minute to gape, dumbfounded. Draco Malfoy had started coming to the Ministry of Magic at a young age, traipsing along behind Lucius as he met with various officials, bribing, cajoling, threatening as needed. He'd seen the inside of more than a few offices in his time, and most of the nicest ones. Nothing he'd seen in the Ministry thus far had prepared him for Granger's office; not even his awe over her reception room could compare.

It was almost circular, a wide expanse of room, and one wall was completely windows. The sun shone through, over a view of Muggle London that Draco couldn't imagine being fake, couldn't possibly surmise what kind of charm work was required to do, illuminating the entire room with lush natural light. The walls were a light cream, seeming to almost shimmer in the puddles of gold lighting that filled the room; Draco was breathless at the beauty and simplicity of it. He would work as hard as Granger if he could come here every day. The floors were smooth, dark wood, highly varnished and similarly gleaming in the light, and a few portraits hung on the walls. There was a small area over to the left, with another sofa (still comfortable looking,) a chair, and some sort of bar service, and then file cabinets and bookshelves lined the wall to the right. One drawer hung open, revealing meticulously organized and tabbed files, and the bookshelves were packed full of leatherbound volumes that Draco suspected were alphabetized.

Granger sat at a huge desk in the middle, surrounded by the anticipated piles of paperwork, and a literal trough on one side was filled with memos, a few still twitching. Two carved oak chairs were in front of her, and the piles of paper were arranged so that she could see across her desk at the inhabitants of the chairs, with a clear view of the door.

And she simply sat there, illuminated like an angel by the puddling light, dust motes gleaming in the illuminated air.

He ran a hand through his hair, mouth agape, and could have sworn he heard her chuckle.

"Granger," he looked around again, completely forgetting to add any malice to his tone. "What on earth?"

She shrugged. "I had some free time," she said modestly, though he knew for a fact she'd never had free time in her life. "I like natural light."

It almost slipped out. _This is incredible_, hovered on the tip of his tongue, and he almost told her. But he remembered himself in time, looking at the woman behind the desk once more, and felt bile rise in his throat at the babble of the wand-checking witch, describing Hermione's meteoric rise through the ministerial ranks.

He approached the desk slowly, enjoying the clicking of his heels on the varnished floor, but neglected to sit, choosing instead to tower above her.

"What can I do for you today, Malfoy?" she asked, light and pleasant, civil and professional. He hated it, hated her tone and her blasé, breezy manner, the way in which she could somehow always manage to suppress her emotions and be ruled by logic.

"Wrong question," he informed her, slowly reaching into his robes, and he saw her eyes follow the path of his hand.

She raised one eyebrow quizzically, showing no other outward signs of interest.

_Aren't you the least bit scared?_ He wanted to ask her._ One of your historical enemies just struts into your office, and now he's nosediving his hand into his robes—aren't you the tiniest bit worried that maybe he escaped security somehow, and now he's about to hex you senseless_?

But apparently she wasn't, for she continued to watch calmly as he withdrew the manila envelope, tossing it onto her desk so that corners of a few pages slipped out.

"Malfoy, what is this?" she asked, making no move to touch what lay before her. "What's going on?"

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He was walking into the elevator when he caught a glimpse of an unwelcome flash of orange. "Hold it!" Someone shouted, and Draco was just about to start jamming on the 'close' button, when the Weasley girl slid smoothly between the doors. "Tha—" she began, choking off the word when she saw him.

"I still have the ability to make you speechless, I see," Draco said smoothly, and watched the tips of her ears turn red. So predictable, these Weasleys.

"Listen Malfoy," she spat angrily. "I don't know what you're doing here, but you shouldn't come here. You don't _belong_ here anymore. You burned that bridge, and fairly comprehensively, I might add."

Draco looked at her for a moment, because her words seemed to hit right in the most sensitive place. It was, after all, exactly what he had been thinking earlier. It was part of the reason he'd formed this whole scheme with Granger, after all. His end goal was a sense of belonging, to return the Malfoy name to its former place of awe.

"And I don't know if you've heard," she continued, when it became obvious that Draco had no immediate reply. "But we're war heroes. Harry, Ron, Hermione and I, we're _universally adored._ And you, well, you're finally where you belong. You're a nobody, with no one, who has nothing."

And with that, she glared down the tip of her nose at him, and swept out of the elevator, leaving Draco alone, and on the wrong floor. Two spots of color burned high in his cheekbones, and he was overcome with the type of rage that he'd forgotten he possessed: the blinding kind, the one stemming primarily from a sense of helplessness, of abject humiliation. It was the type of desperate anger he'd felt the day Granger had slapped him, and the time that Moody had turned him into a ferret and bounced him around to show Potter. It was the rage he'd felt when Crabbe and Goyle had started the fire in the Room of Requirement, and the sick helplessness in his throat when Potter had rescued him once more.

It was the anger, the desperation, of not being quite evil enough. He could never really pick a side: to kill Dumbledore, or not? He would always be wavering, stuck on the fence, helpless, alone.

Draco Malfoy swept out of the elevator, angry, hurt, and finally decisive. It was time to start picking sides.

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**MALFOY AND GRANGER TO MARRY: AN END TO POST-WAR TENSIONS FINALLY IN SIGHT**

On the eve of Albus Dumbledore's demise, Draco Malfoy called a press conference outside the Ministry of Magic, inviting a reporter from every major wizarding publication.

While the topic of the conference was not revealed beforehand, Mr. Malfoy is notorious for his privacy and rather solitary lifestyle, and speculation was rampant. Since the incarceration of their patriarch, Lucius Malfoy, the Malfoy family has been little seen in the public eye. The family finances are currently involved in an ongoing investigation by the Department of Magical Finances and Regulations (DMFR).

Mr. Malfoy has recently completed a court-mandated sentence of public service to atone for what the Ministry deemed his 'war crimes,' and tells the Prophet that he has "every intention" of continuing in his current post in the Ministry "although, hopefully for profit," he specifies, smiling, and references the DMFR's open investigation into his finances.

Hermione Granger, who was not available for comment at the time of this publication, is Witch Weekly Magazine's Most Eligible Bachelorette for three years running. Over the years Ms. Granger has been publicly seen with only a few others, most notably Ron Weasley, companion to Ms. Granger and Harry Potter during their Hogwarts days. Mr. Weasley and Ms. Granger, while photographed together just last week (Page 2), have denied all speculation that they are together after a public falling-out two years ago. Mr. Weasley told the Prophet at that point that Ms. Granger was a "know-it-all lunatic who cared only for the common good," and Ms. Granger claimed that Mr. Weasley had "the emotional range" of some extremely inappropriate objects. The Prophet was sued for libel, and both statements have been retracted, but the lawsuit was inconclusive. The two are purportedly on good terms once more, and Ms. Granger was a guest of honor at Mr. Weasley's recent wedding to Daphne Greengrass.

Mr. Weasley's wedding has long been considered the first step in healing the tensions of the war. Ms. Greengrass, while not from a prominent Death Eater family, was nonetheless not involved in the anti-Voldemort campaign, and several protests were made against the marriage. However, both Mr. Weasley and the former Ms. Greengrass are from well-respected Pureblood families, and so the Wizarding World has been waiting for another miracle.

This seems to have come in the form of a union between ex-Death Eater Draco Malfoy and war hero extraordinaire, next in line for Ministress of Magic, Hermione Granger. Mr. Malfoy announced their upcoming marriage in his press conference this Thursday, shocking reporters and public alike.

Mr. Malfoy said that a date with his wedding to the muggleborn Ms. Granger, who has spent the last three years eradicating Wizarding laws that benefit Purebloods, has not yet been set. "We've been dating secretly for about a year now," Mr. Malfoy confessed to The Prophet, "but hadn't wanted to announce anything until we were sure."

Mr. Malfoy confided in The Prophet that they hoped their union would be accepted by the Wizarding community as "one of the greatest miracles" to begin the healing of "a war-torn society."

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**review? **


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